Notices by Angle (angle@anticapitalist.party)

So apparently Jacobin decided to spontaneously renew my subscription, despite the fact that I haven't been subscribed to them for *years*, and the credit card I had with them should have been expired. Will probably have to contact my bank and ask them to dispute the charge or something. Oh joy. -_-

@piuvas You got me! Yaaaaaaayyyy.... -_-

Ugh. I need to find a new browser? Whyyyyyyy...! X0

Maybe I'll give Librewolf a shot? Couple hours compilation isn't that bad... :/

@dnc Huh, slimy aerial roots? You might have gotten yourself some nitrogen fixing corn, then. Impressive, I had thought that stuff would be rare for years yet. :/

@darrenmorin @stevenimpson I did go back to a flip phone! Mostly just as a temporary solution while I decide on something more permanent, but still. XD

@darrenmorin @stevenimpson Though, temporary solutions being what they are, I might end up sticking with it for a few years... :/

@dee Thinking about this, and like - whose job is it, precisely, to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen? That core infra like this has more support? Do we expect the government to do it? Corporations? Or if neither of them, (Not keen on either, personally), then who? Is someone going to go "This is my job, I will systematically review all open source projects and make note of the ones that need more support"?

@dee Is this a job for some non-profit foundation, maybe? Or just a whole gaggle of different people, all with their own crowdfunding or whatever? :/

@dee Personally, I wouldn't mind taking a step back and funding an organization whose job it is to find problems like this and assemble solutions for them - find people to review all the core infra software and make sure it's supported, or assemble resources for the programmers of such, or a million other things. That's no small ask though - even just deciding what, exactly, falls within that area is quite a task. :/

Ah, Lisp. My ancient foe. We meet again...! :0

Oh fuck, the Lisp is starting to make sense to me. Oh no! :0

So my dad got some weird email program on his phone that basically took over his home screen and demanded that he enter his google and yahoo information, in order to be able to use his phone again - and even after he linked it to his google account, it still wouldn't go away. I told him it was probably a virus or something, and that he should take his phone somewhere to have it removed, and make sure to de-authorize any suspicious services from his google account.

But of course, it might not be a virus! It might just be software that someone decided to make really shitty. Such is the state of modern corporate software - something locks you out of a device and demands your information? Par for the course, really. :/

It still amazes me how shitty capitalist software is, compared to capitalist hardware. Buy some hardware? It might be expensive, and it might not do everything you want, but it should usually be pretty decent for what it is, and not just randomly fuck with you for fun and profit. Software? No such promises. XD

@jamey I think negative income taxes are different - they give you more money based on how much money you make, instead of more money based on how much money you don't make. :/

@jamey No, same idea. Though I think structuring it as a tax is still weird and confusing. Just call it graduated welfare benefits or something, that's what it is. :/

I suppose one possible criticism of this is that it's effectively a subsidy for low paying jobs - people will be more likely to take them vs spending time looking for higher paying ones, because they also collect some welfare benefits, which means that companies will have an easier time slashing wages. I think it's still worth it overall, but it is something to consider. :/

I asked my dad about this, and he laughed and said I was thinking like a programmer, and that's just not how legislators or administrators think - but it still doesn't seem that hard to me? Taxes work a lot like this - graduated brackets, where you only pay higher tax rates on income above specific amounts. You could apply the same idea to welfare benefits easily enough, or use a fancy equation like I suggested. :/

So, I've been thinking about this lately - and it should really be an easy problem to solve? Just make it so that instead of all the benefits cutting out after a point, there's a graduated scale - your first dollar past that point loses you 1 cent of welfare, and this ratio steadily increases, until finally your last 99 cents of welfare get wiped out by a dollar of income. Seems simple enough. :/